Hi there. I asked the following question already in the openSUSE forums, but I just got one answer and that one didn't work.
I usually am not that stupid to find stuff out by myself, but somehow this topic is too confusing for me.
I just want to type words like "watashi" and then have it converted into kanji or hiragana for me.
I read that openSUSE 11.1 is pretty easy in this regard when it is selected during the installation, but how to do it afterwards -- especially in KDE 4(.2)?

When I tried to find that out by myself, I found lots of options:
im-ja, scim, skim, uim, anthy, canna, xim, tomoe,...
That's really overwhelming for someone who has absolutely no previous experience with CJK input on Linux.
It seems to me that scim/skim is the preferred way to achieve the solution, but scim seems to offer only GTK/GNOME integration and skim seems to be available only for KDE 3.

Could someone please be so kind to offer a fool-proof explanation how to do it?
Thank you in advance.

I use ibus and find it not as difficult to setup as scim, uim, etc.. It has support for Qt4 but it's Japanese input is not very madure (enough for me, though). If there are not packages for your distribution, you can compile from the source.

I use scim-bridge with Anthy (sudo zypper in scim-bridge scim-tables-anthy anthy) and it works. Unfortunately it's a GTK+ application, but it performs well.

In KDE 3 I use skim (scim) and works really well but, in KDE 4 locks keyboard very often and isn't usable.

Currently I'm using UIM and works with KDE 4 well, not as well as skim with KDE 3, enough for a second year japanese student like me.

I am using skim at the moment. It locks up sometimes, but I just have to live with it because I am afraid to make a switch. ibus looks really promising, but it does support the method I use. I guess I will be stuck with skim for a while.

Thanks for the replies.

dpalacio wrote:I use ibus

I installed Ibus together with its Anthy module and, of course, Anthy. I set up Anthy as input method in ibus (sadly a GTK app), but the language bar stays greyed.

einar wrote:I use scim-bridge with Anthy (sudo zypper in scim-bridge scim-tables-anthy anthy) and it works. Unfortunately it's a GTK+ application, but it performs well.

I never understood scim. I don't know what I did wrong, but I couldn't get scim to work.

Ignacio Serantes wrote:In KDE 3 I use skim (scim) and works really well but, in KDE 4 locks keyboard very often and isn't usable.

Currently I'm using UIM and works with KDE 4 well, not as well as skim with KDE 3, enough for a second year japanese student like me.

I also used SKim. It worked quite well for me and, unlike the other options, I found it intuitive. However Shift+Space always activated it for me (even though I disabled that shortcut) which was very annoying when not typing Japanese and with KDE3 going the way of the dodo, I fear that it won't be an option after my next OS upgrade.

I'm not sure if I tried UIM. I think I did and found myself to be too stupid for it.......

KAMiKAZOW wrote:Thanks for the replies.

dpalacio wrote:I use ibus

I installed Ibus together with its Anthy module and, of course, Anthy. I set up Anthy as input method in ibus (sadly a GTK app), but the language bar stays greyed.

Did you set QT_IMMODULE ? If not, select the IM method with a context menu in a lineedit.

I also used SKim. It worked quite well for me and, unlike the other options, I found it intuitive. However Shift+Space always activated it for me (even though I disabled that shortcut) which was very annoying when not typing Japanese and with KDE3 going the way of the dodo, I fear that it won't be an option after my next OS upgrade.

I'm not sure if I tried UIM. I think I did and found myself to be too stupid for it.......

Expect the same problem with UIM. It is difficult for me to understand why it is so hard to take this off mechanisms. All suffer from the same problems so I guess the root of the issue will be on the X.

If you use openSUSE, install UIM packages and then activate using /etc/sysconfig editor included in Yast. I'ts really easy. Be noted that uim-pref-qt is broken, so you need uim-pref-gtk if you want configure UIM.

For the daily work with asian languages KDE 4 sucks and not just by input problems, support for other code pages has a bunch of bugs and you be forced to use other programs very often because Konqueror 4 fails miserably.

When these issues occur, please report them in the bug tracker. They are likely low level bugs in either KDE Libs or Qt.

bcooksley wrote:When these issues occur, please report them in the bug tracker. They are likely low level bugs in either KDE Libs or Qt.

I have reported four bugs about problems with page codes in bug tracking with examples more than one month ago. While these bugs are not confirmed I will not report more.

dpalacio wrote:Did you set QT_IMMODULE ? If not, select the IM method with a context menu in a lineedit.

http://code.google.com/p/ibus/wiki/ReadMe tells me that from now on I have to run my apps from the command line. So I ran KWrite with
QT_IM_MODULE=ibus kwrite
but the language bar stays grayed out.

Excuse my rude language, but what is this ****? I even tried to install Red Flag Linux, an east-asian distro, within VirtualBox and it didn't work to enter kanji (I selected Japanese keyboard layout during installation). That's so frustrating.

I wouldn't be surprised if the IBus Qt module is for Qt3. Try it with some Qt3 applications. You may need to use a different variable with Qt4, or the IBus Qt module may need to be ported.

No, it's Qt 4.4

IBus don't works for me with openSUSE.

Try running these commands, then logging out:

Code: Select all

echo "export QT_IMMODULE=ibus" > $KDEHOME/Autostart/cjk-input.sh
chmod +x $KDEHOME/Autostart/cjk-input.sh